


It's a Non-Fucking-Issue

by EmmyAngua



Category: Thick of It (UK)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Secrets, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-26
Updated: 2012-09-26
Packaged: 2017-11-15 02:46:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/522290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmmyAngua/pseuds/EmmyAngua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malcolm has a secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's a Non-Fucking-Issue

**Author's Note:**

> This has been my head-canon since the specials aired. I never meant to write it but the damn thing won’t leave me alone. I hope you’ll agree that it adds an interesting dimension to his character.
> 
> I also hope (once you’ve read it) you’ll appreciate that I’ve not tried to make Malcolm into a woobie. I wanted to be realistic to his character. 
> 
> As a warning it’s VERY offensive in terms of language and expression because it’s Malcolm’s POV.

When the whole world turns to shit Malcolm is the one who gets out the _Mr. Muscle_ and starts polishing up the turds. Give him a story about a back bencher sucking off a rent boy in a Nazi-themed sex club and he’ll turn it into a heart-warming story about the right honourable Arthur Twatterton-Bentcock coming to terms with his sexuality while researching the KS2 History curriculum on behalf of the Department of Education. 

It’s no surprise then that Malcolm himself will never have his dirty laundry aired in public. Not only is Malcolm’s power of spin nearly supernatural, but anyone trying to do it would have to face Malcolm afterwards, and as yet no one is that brave.

Also, there really isn’t that much to air. When a man lives and breathes his job his personal life falls by the wayside. 

But there are some things he’d like to keep private. 

Of course saying that is like inviting a terrier to an arse sniffing party. In the game of politics the idea that someone has something they’d like to keep private causes gleeful speculation. 

Well it’s nothing like that. He’s never fiddled his expenses or made a 3am visit to A and E with half the contents of a cutlery drawer up his arse. His bank account and his shitter are both as clean as a whistle. But that doesn’t mean there are things he’d be very upset to have found out. And Malcolm’s version of ‘very upset’ would involve meat cleavers and electrodes attached to the balls of the cuntforce stupid enough to try and blackmail him. 

Thankfully his secrets (or at least the one particular secret he cares about) would involve a certain amount of intelligence to work out, as well as an understanding of Malcolm’s character. So far he’s met very few people with both. 

They’d have to work it out step by step. Starting with:

**1\. Malcom has a deep, dark secret.**

Correct. Maybe it’s not dark, but it’s certainly hidden deeply. 

**2\. The secret is that he’s gay.**

It’s a standard assumption of anyone guessing a politician’s secret. It’s not 1971 anymore. He’s not married. If he was revealed to be gay (and whether he is or isn’t is beside the point) he’d come out of it looking like a fucking saint. Also planting the notion that Malcolm’s aggressive sexual threats aren’t all bluff couldn’t hurt when dealing with low level twats like Ollie Reeder.

So anyone smart enough to make it this far would move on to the next assumption:

**3\. It could ruin his career. Or get him arrested for murder.**

It couldn’t. And he’d have to be absolutely fucking moronic to make as many enemies as he has if there were any acid filled tubs in his cupboards with bits of fingernails floating about in them. 

So that leads to:

**4\. It’s something that would affect his job.**

Hoo-fucking-ray. Bingo. Give the man or woman who gets this far a fucking speedboat. 

And what would affect his job? 

Not being able to intimidate anyone would do it. No one laughs at Malcolm for a reason (at least not after they’ve met him). If you can laugh at something you aren’t scared of it and Malcolm’s livelihood depends on the morons and fucktards around him being terrified to roughly the same level as they would be if an eight foot drug addict took them up the arse while stealing their wallet and demanding their pin numbers. 

No, the only way anyone could actually find out would be via his family. And Malcolm has a spot on his desk reserved for the thimbleful of ashes that would remain of the person who tried to get to him via his mother or sister.

And it wouldn’t even be _him_ roasting the poor bastard alive. 

If someone followed him around for long enough they might get a hint. And they’d have to be really paying attention. They’d have to be eating, sleeping, fucking, and shitting Malcolm Tucker’s life to spot the few moments where fear flits across his eyes.

His extreme reluctance to go on Newsnight. 

Running away from that fucking camera at the party conference.

Any situation in fact where he isn’t allowed to fucking _swear_. 

Of course it’s not that he _can’t_ survive in a situation without swearing. He’s met the Queen and Nelson Mandela. He got through an entire dinner sitting next to Angela Merkel (and fucking hell he’d never wanted to swear more in his life) without her once considering whether it might be third time lucky in another Anglo/German punch up. 

Swearing is a safety blanket (tartan and covered in classily embroidered ‘cunts’ and ‘fucks’) that he can be without if needed but that he hangs onto in moments of stress.

So the question that the mastermind-winning Sherlock-Holmes-fanboy whose got this far should be asking is this: if he’s in his fifties now and can just about manage without swearing, was there a time when he couldn’t? And, most importantly, why did he need it in the first place?

At this point even the fat fucker who photoshops the cum off of the faces of the Page 3 girls should be able to work it out. Colin Firth won a fucking Oscar for it. Though Malcolm hates Firth far less than the globe-trotting, unfunny cockcheese Palin.

A stammer. 

And any armchair psychologists out there can fuck right off. He never wet the bed or had wet dreams about his mother’s cunt. His dad was a vicious bastard but having one of those is practically a Scottish tradition. 

He had a stammer. He got dragged to therapy (twice before he packed it in). He found something that worked for him and refused to go back.

He sorted it by himself. 

It’s a non-issue. 

But thank fuck that the world if full of brain-dead shitheads who have never worked it out. 

**End**

**Author's Note:**

> For those who somehow don’t know Colin Firth and Michael Palin starred in The King’s Speech and A Fish Called Wanda – both of which highlighted swearing as a method for coping with a stammer. It made sense to me that that’s how Malcolm started and his enjoyment of it, his temper, and his high pressured job have made it part of his personality. 
> 
> For the record swearing is NOT THE WAY TO CURE A STUTTER. I’m not claiming it is. It just made sense that Malcolm would attack the problem in his own bull-headed way. 
> 
> The running away from the camera moment is a deleted scene and is hilarious. As is Nicola and Ollie’s reaction to the video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp3ZosksbPM at 5.42 and 6.51.)


End file.
